Flowers for Linda

Hello Friends:

My friend and neighbor Linda is retiring from teaching this week, so to commemorate the occasion, I thought I'd paint her something. This painting started out as a landscape, but I grew unhappy with it and ended up scraping the wet paint off and starting again. My eye fell upon a bunch of flowers that my kids gave me for Mother's Day, and I loved the way the sunlight was catching just the side of some of the petals. I believe it was Matisse who said that a drop of red is more powerful than a bucketful. I had this in mind as I tried to make that small part of the painting the focal point. I think that just this small amount of red is more powerful than an entire bouquet of such an intense color.